The growth rate of high-tech investments has slowed dramatically over the past 10 years, especially since the Great Recession.

Everyone has a pet theory explaining why the economic recovery has been so weak, but heres one overlooked factor: The productivity revolution driven by computers, software and the Internet is fading, and nothing has yet emerged to take its place as an engine of growth.

For all of the incessant buzz in the markets about the latest tech start-up, few businesses are investing much in high-tech equipment or software. Investments in information processing equipment and software are growing at the slowest pace in decades, just a fraction of the booming growth rates of the late 1990s. See the Bureau of Economc Analysis data.

High-tech investments were a major driver of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s. Businesses were spending a lot on new equipment, software and research, and those investments were paying off by boosting output.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

But now 60 years of electronics-led productivity could be grinding to a halt. The slowdown in high-tech investment today means a slower growing economy tomorrow.....

The link doesn't redirect to the proper article, but I'll vouch for the gist of this. I've been laid off three times in the last two years, and after beating the bushes quite a bit, I'm about to start my fourth IT job since 2012 for wages that I'd normally not even pull out of my driveway for. Our Halfrican-American-In-Chief and his minions fiddle while Western civilization burns........

No, I think it’s real. H.G. Wells saw this in his novel, THINGS TO COME, but he mistakenly identified energy as the devalued commodity. His idea was actually based on the discovery of radioactivity, and he imagined small, cheap, durable energy sources driving trains, automobiles, and factories, and putting 80% of the economy out of business.

In electronic information technology, this has been a cyclic phenomenon, with the boom in the new level, PCs or whatever, taking over where the old level faded and died. But this has to end somewhere doesn’t it? We’re not going to have 10^100 megabytes at 10^100 Hertz on a pinhead. Are we?

Could be! Could be! It’s crazy to read and see the fifties and sixties books and TV shows based on AI. The superior machine intelligence has been a stock in trade since the 1940’s I think, and many depictions had them based on vacuum tube technology.

I guess it is starting to happen, but I remember the rhetorical challenge I heard in the 1960’s at Bell Labs, “Let’s see you build a gnat.” Well, how about it?

My own version of that challenge is to build a robot that can play basketball. Boy, that would be something! Can you even imagine it? I don’t think so!

Not necessarily. While computing power will, at some point top out in all practical terms, the applications that can use that computing power is still theoretically unlimited. Until we get homes equipped with computers like the IBM Big Blue, we can’t even say that we’re even close to hitting the limit of computing power.
Much of the reason for the slow down in technological advancement can be chalked up to the simple fact that there are no applications that need much more computing power than what currently exists. However, that could rapidly change if high level artificial intelligence or a home holodeck system were to ever become a reality

13
posted on 03/08/2014 12:30:25 AM PST
by Jonty30
(What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults)

Much of the reason for the slow down in technological advancement can be chalked up to the simple fact that there are no applications that need much more computing power than what currently exists.

I think this is entirely wrong. The brute speed, if you will, of advancing computing technology has been the scythe which has mowed down all before it. Case in point, telephones! This was an old technology for establishing "talking paths" which benefited from advancing computing technology by being able to "switch" these talking paths more rapidly and efficiently. All of a sudden though, the computing technology got so fast that it absorbed the transmission technology itself, so that "switching" became obsolete and got pushed aside, even if I, for one, still have a "land line".

So, I assume that applications that "don't need more computing power" will simply be brushed aside by the new realities that this computing power creates.

People don’t usually see the next tech revolution coming. Keep your eye on 3D printing. Why build giant factories to build stuff when in can be printed in a garage? Why have inventory and just in time delivery when stuff can be printed on the spot as needed? What does that do to retailers?

The government, which is now 80% liberal, is trying to drive us to a feudal economy and lifestyle where the average citizen walks to his subsistence job and steps off the path to tug his forelock as our masters motor by in air-conditioned comfort. They want us in sustainable slums with everything in walking distance. I own a car that gets 40 mpg and it cost $5 just to go into town and back. Insurance and taxes are killing any tech market we might have, as they have killed housing and good jobs. Obama tripled the money supply and the economy didnt budge. That was by design. He essentially robbed us of our wealth.

If you want a vibrant screaming economy, good defenses and a safe place to live, get rid of liberal nanny-state government.

I am going to reduce down to 1 PC and one Cell phone. No intelligent i-phone whatever you call it. I have always gone against the grain, never follow the crowd, and I don’t want to be one of those fools with my face in a tiny 4x3 inch screen all the time. Life is to precious to me to waste staring at a screen outside the home unless I am being paid. I like to have a real life, not a virtual one.

31
posted on 03/08/2014 5:30:31 AM PST
by central_va
(I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)

Did it ever occur to people the slowdown is caused by people without jobs. We have been dumping american jobs in both high tech and manufacturing for years now. Now they are all scratching their damn heads trying to figure out why americans are not buying anything. They are not working or they are working for so much less that all they can afford are the basics.

The reality is that the productivity gains brought about by the last 50+ years of computing adoption have reached a point of saturation. Computing power is now so cheap, applications used by the business sector are so ubiquitous that there are few to no more businesses left without the benefits of basic technology.

There are no huge productivity gains on the horizon from technology, and there haven’t been any disruptive technologies developed since the roll-out of the internet 10 years ago. Now the ‘net has just penetrated even the most remote corners of industry in the US, to the point where the ‘net is now in most anyone’s pocket (in their smartphone) in huge swathes of the CONUS area.

Even as recently as 15 years ago, running a small business’ books on computers was a significant investment of thousands of dollars. Today, you can buy a PC for a couple hundred bucks, Quickbooks for a little bit more, and wha-la, you’ve lept forward of paper accounting. There’s “website in a can” sites and tools out there to allow small businesses to set up e-commerce sites in a half day. What more is there that will provide a big leap forward in productivity? Not much. Facebook, Twitter, etc aren’t productivity boosting technologies. In fact, for most businesses, these social networking sites are huge time sinks.

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